


A Dustland Fairytale

by hitlikehammers



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: M/M, Nostalgia, Shore Leave, quiet romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-18
Updated: 2013-05-18
Packaged: 2017-12-12 05:46:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,191
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/807978
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hitlikehammers/pseuds/hitlikehammers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Shore leave in Iowa, watching the sunset.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Dustland Fairytale

**Author's Note:**

> For the [](http://cliche-bingo.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://cliche-bingo.livejournal.com/)**cliche_bingo** Prompt - Character Study.

Leonard had forgotten this.

He’d forgotten, in spite of himself; the scent of the sun, the taste of something sweet in the air, the way that inescapable _light_ plagued this planet, his home - _their_ home - the way that it bleeds like a wound beneath his lids even as he squints against it, white and red blossoming hot and fierce before black ever thinks to settle behind his eyes. He’d forgotten, and it hitches, catches something in him as he watches the empty plains roll out in every direction - he is one man in the middle of nowhere, and he’d forgotten these simple human truths that kept him grounded against the cosmos.

His boots leave heavy prints in the loose dust, and they just don’t seem to belong to him as he catches their impression in his peripheral vision; they don’t belong here, somehow, unseemly atop this untouched wasteland, known only to the sky and the wind - scars on the face of God. He breathes deeply, the slow scrape of pollen and decay against his lungs like rain in the desert, a sudden song rejoicing in the subtle knowledge of simply being _alive_ \- of existing _as_ nature, instead of outside it. He’s spent too long sucking recycled air, surrounded by metal - _this_ was how man was meant to live, damnit: skin-to-skin with the very ground he came from, the same soil he’d return to in the end.

The farther he walks - the closer he gets - the darker it should be, but the brighter it becomes. The pinpricks of the stars are so distant and faint, tiny cross-sections of the universe staring back at him from afar, lost in the smooth gradient of white gold where it mingles with the deep bruise of night below; reminding them of what they’ve left behind, if only for a time. The sun dies a spectacular death, but that bed of black awaiting it reminds him that they take half of this world with them wherever they go - that night reigns even here, the half of a whole that they get to hold close. It makes space seem a little less daunting, somehow, that simple revelation - a little less alien.

The shape, the silhouette in front of him is strange against the slow-fading blue; dark where he should be bathed in golds and tans, shoulders thrown back, heels of his palms dug deep, feeling the pulse of the earth beneath his fingers. His jeans are torn along the lengths of his thighs, and the shy peek of rosy skin from under the faded denim speaks of the fervent kiss of sun, harsh and heated, radiating warmth as it continues to burn beneath Jim’s flesh, the greedy touch of a lover too long denied. His legs disappear below the fault-line, the canyon yawning beneath the soles of his shoes as he tempts the jaws of fate from higher ground, and Leonard doesn’t know what to make of the scene as he comes upon it; so much said there without a single word - kinetic while barely breathing, without moving a muscle or blinking an eye.

That endless fucking hole in the world gapes up at him like the mouth of Hades, and he stares into the belly of the beast for a second too long, the sheer void of it overwhelming but stopping just short of forever. His heart thumps an extra beat for every three before his knees creak over the ledge and he settles against the unforgiving rock, ankles dangling precariously over the jagged fringe of oblivion. The cliff face presses up against him, ominous somehow, significant in ways that it shouldn’t be, that it isn’t (but it _is_ , goddamnit), and he has to swallow hard against the hint of something profound that he’s just not quick enough to catch anymore, lest it choke him.

Jim smells of wild mint leaves, split down the center under the force of his stubbled jaw; smells like sweat and dirt and growing things, and it reminds Leonard of everything he’s ever left behind, everything he’s given up. Reminds him what he gave it up _for_ in the first place, why he never lingers on the thought of going back.

That soft, sculpted face is turned to the distance, zeroed-in on infinity and watching its every move with the threat of a smirk, the dying light caught in his eyes like the flicker of a candle, and his skin is so soft against the growing shadows, the gathering storm - stretched like copper across his bones, the highlights shining and the dark parts deep. His hands are brown with dirt, palms nearly black in the creases; Leonard sees the color scheme reflected under his own fingernails, and it takes him back to hurricane season and the lingering density of wet Southern heat: they’re a picture of their roots, sitting there on the precipice - torn, tattered, and transplanted across too many stars, and the soil here, it just don’t recognize them any more, can’t hold them steady - they’re hanging loose, unfettered and untamed, just blowing in the wind. The sheen of Jim’s hair is weighted down by the grime of living through the day, clumped in strands and straw-like, dull as it hangs to frame his cheek, the curtain of it matted in a way that makes Leonard nostalgic somehow, makes him yearn for days more simple, more honest somehow - and yet more empty, so _empty_ , for want of the man at his side.

Everything is silent, dead around them, and they are the last souls on Earth in that single second; everything is reduced to the way their breaths overlap, catching the tail ends of one another and laying chase through the ether, the emptiness, and Leonard can’t help but want in that moment, can’t help but need. The way those lips seem to swell as the shadows play over Jim’s mouth, deepening the wine stain of raspberries stolen from the brambles; the way his pulse juts slow and lazy, steady yet strong at his throat, mesmerizing as it trembles in the narrowing shafts of lights, dancing in the last stolen sighs of day - fuck, but Leonard _wants_.

And yet - it’s a quiet sort of solitude that floods the space between, a shared kind of still, and he’s hard-pressed to be the one who breaks it, because it echoes through the hollow parts of him, keeping him warm until the promise of tomorrow - a thousand tomorrows - finally fills him with something worthwhile.

“S’beautiful, isn’t it?”

Jim’s voice is slow, ephemeral, his eyes never moving from the dark line of the sky, and he doesn’t have to say that he misses the sunset sometimes, misses that blush of ruby on the absent horizon in the vacuum of space; because, like so much about Jim Kirk, Leonard just _knows_.

“Yeah.” His voice is rough, untempered, and it brushes harsh against the grain of everything that this moment between them absolutely _isn’t_. The taste of the wind is salt and earth and honey on his tongue, and if his arm brushes Jim’s as he sucks in that glow - well, then, that’s okay.

“Yeah, it is.”


End file.
